Elements and Memory
by Raindog Bride
Summary: Snapshots, one shots, crack pairings, and character explorations. A collection of scenes that take place before, during, and after the game. Part thirteen up- and it's entirely innapropriate!
1. Sacred Sisters

**Elements and Memory**

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It was difficult, Wink though wryly, being the only normal one in a crowd of, well…

Setie had locked herself inside one of the kitchen cupboards again and was crying hysterically into the potatoes and bunches of hanging garlic. Luanna had gone to comfort her, but had brained herself on an open pantry door, and was now cursing with un-maidenly vitriol on the ground, which only horrified Setie more.

Wink, who'd been following the drama ever since it had run shrieking and sobbing past her bedroom door, where she had been busy recuperating from her journey to Kashua Glacier. She had set down her book with a sigh, braided up her hair once more, then had followed the disturbances down to the castle kitchen, which was very empty at this time of day.

When she entered, Setie was still crying, and Luanna was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a mulish look that was uncharacteristic on her pretty face, and seemed more fitting on Miranda.

A twinge hit her heart at that, but she ignored it and descended to Luanna's side in a flutter of long skirts.

"Why is she crying?" she muttered into Luanna's ear so Setie wouldn't hear. Wink helped the blind girl up gently, then closed the pantry door behind her with a snap.

Luanna held one hand to her head, and sounded somewhat peeved. "One of the guards said 'excuse me' when he passed her in the hall,"

"I was in his WAY!" wailed a devastated voice from inside the cupboard. "Now he's going to think I'm RUDE!"

Luanna tried to give Wink an exasperated look. Sadly, she aimed it a foot to Wink's left.

"I'll take care of her," said Wink soothingly, her hands making fluttering motions in front of her. "You just… eat something." She didn't think that Luanna was entirely capable of making it back upstairs by herself, and she was flustered, besides, and kitchens food, don't they?

Luanna grumbled, and carefully maneuvered away. She found a carrot rather by accident, but settled down at the kitchen table with it anyway, biting the tip off rather aggressively. Usually Setie led her around and warned her of oncoming obstacles, but since Setie was currently experiencing yet another emotional breakdown, Luanna's mobility was more restricted than usual.

She was blind, but she didn't like being reminded that she was.

Setie's problem was more… complicated.

Wink smoothed down her skirts, checked to see that she had a suitably clean handkerchief, then readied herself to open the cupboard.

Setie was fragile.

She couldn't help it. She was an earnest, loving, sincere young lady who wanted to please everyone at once, and when she didn't, she crumbled to pieces. Usually Miranda just yelled at her whenever she showed signs of cracking, and Setie, earnest to please the biggest, bravest, and _best_ Sacred Sister, would pull herself together and be as cheery as possible. But Miranda wasn't here now.

Wink felt herself sink a little.

They all missed her.

She knocked on the cabinet door softly. "Setie," she called in the most comforting tone she knew, "What's wrong, lovey, really?"

"EVERYONE HATES ME!" came a cry of despair from inside. "And I keep thinking, I have to stop crying because Miranda is going to get _so angry at me_, but she isn't _here_, and that makes it so much worse!" And then came a storm of continued weeping, and a rattling sound that must have meant that, in her grief, Setie had sent the garlic careening towards the floor and the potatoes after it.

Wink closed her eyes and searched her head for some sort of solution.

It was disconcerting how the loss of Miranda made everyone fall apart. Wink hadn't witnessed the first few days of her absence, she'd been busy recovering from her to recover Theresa from the glacier, and then had immersed herself in the palace restoration project. Even before that, before Shana and the Queen had been captured by… Mr. Lloyd, she had still been returning from Tiberoa.

Setie couldn't function without someone to jerk her back into some semblance of normality. Luanna couldn't even take a walk around the city without Setie at her side. And Wink couldn't concentrate on the daily trials and expectations of the palace when both of the remaining Sacred Sisters were incapacitated.

What would Miranda do? Wink thought helplessly, casting her worried eyes to the ceiling.

The answer was so immediately obvious that she felt like laughing, but she ruthlessly quelled that impulse as she drew herself up to her highest, and clenched her skirts in both handa.

"Setie!" she barked, and pounded on the cupboard door. "If you don't open this door immediately and get a hold of yourself, then I will chop the da-darned thing down with a- an AXE!"

It was the best Miranda impression that she could come up with on short notice, but she still felt elated. So that's what it feels like to be Miranda! she thought giddily.

Still rather pleased with herself, she lifted her hand to rap smartly on the door again and Setie smiled woefully out at her with swimming red-rimmed eyes. "I'm sorry, Wink," she managed, her voice small and wobbly. "I'll try harder next time." And with that she threw her arms around Wink's waist and buried her wet face in her chest.

Wink relented, and stroked Setie's hair softly. "It's all right, Setie," she murmured. "Nobody hates you."

Setie stiffened, and for one dangerous second it seemed like she was about to burst into tears again, and Wink could suddenly see Luanna waving her arms with a horrified expression on her face, mouthing, _NO NO NO. _

Wink coughed, then tried again. "I mean, " she said in her Miranda voice as she broke away. "If you don't take Luanna up to Theresa's room to see how the Queen is doing, then I will get _Very Mildly Upset!"_

Setie squeaked, then lunged for Luanna, who was giving a thumbs up in Wink's general direction. Setie grabbed the blind girl by the wrist and began running towards the stairs, hauling Luanna behind her.

Once the sounds of their mingled footsteps faded into the distance, Wink allowed herself to laugh. If it was an overly wet laugh interwoven with not a few dabs of a handkerchief, then nobody was around to hear.

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	2. Haschel

**Elements and Memory**

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It is important, thought Kaffi in a drowsy state of satisfaction, to like your job.

And she did. She really did. Not only did the tavern provide her with working in the center of gossip for the entire city, but the pay was good, the work was easy, and there were some definite perks.

And having a man this interesting fall into your hands out of the blue was, above all things, a perk.

She was going to have such a rash in the morning from that mustache, she mused sleepily.

But now-

Kaffi poked the wide expanse of dark-skinned back in front of her with one finger. "You asleep yet? Because I'm not asleep and usually that's because the neighbor's dog just _yaps on_ all night, but not this time I guess because you wouldn't _believe_ what his owner gets up to during the day and-"

He growled in his throat, and rolled over to face her.

Dark eyes over a large beaky nose and a bristly mustache bored into her. "Kaffi, sweetheart" he rasped. "I'm tired. And I'm only here because Nello's is way too crowded. Go to sleep."

"One more time?" she offered cheerfully. The moonlight from the open window showed the horribly innocent expression on her face.

He thought it over.

"Yeah, why not?" said Haschel, and sat up in bed to stretch his back, and then lay down again next to her with a delicious slowness.

Kaffi _loved_ her job.

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	3. Meru

**Elements and Memory**

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Zenebatos was made of bones.

Meru felt it. She _knew _it, on some level. The buildings were just the bones of what they had been, its servants just bones and copies of thinking creatures, and somewhere, miles down, lay the bones and dust of the people who had lived here.

Ruled here.

The party was sleeping for the night amidst the rubble, far from the droids, and equally far from the glittering strangeness that was Savan's last thoughts. They were tired. Tired and frustrated, with gritty eyes and gritty joints, and everyone was _snapping_ at each other. Except for Dart. He barely talked to anyone anymore. He hadn't since Shana had been taken. Rose... Rose went back to what she had been. No more quiet, biting criticism, or the flash of white teeth in a smile so rare that as soon as you saw it you wondered if you really had. Now she was all cold eyes and long night watches and a tongue that didn't say anything unless it was absolutely necessary.

They knew what she was now. Dart may have forgiven her. That was his way. Of course, he knew her better than any of them did, always had. But that didn't fix it for the rest of them. They'd been brought up on the stories of the Black Monster.

Miranda resented her most of all. Her sister, Luanna, had her eyes burned out of her head by Rose, and her mother killed. She knew first hand the terror that had gripped Mille Seseau when a thriving and peaceful town had been wiped off the map in a single night. Many of the refugees had fled to Serdio, and Albert had heard their stories. Haschel had offered little. Only said that his daughter might have been in Neet.

Meru had slipped away. Climbed up on the rocks and leaned with her back against them as she watched the lights of the droids flutter and buzz overhead. Her hair was down, and it clung to her skin with the tenacity of static, and rippled in the cold and parched wind.

She'd been feeling this strange gnawing feeling ever since they had walked into Aglis. Ever since Ulara, really. That there was this whole other _world, _this giant complex world that no one had ever told her about. One that had featured her ancestors. One that might have featured her. And what had she found?

A city in a wasteland populated by a vague and ancient society that had been dying for millennia. A city underwater, populated by one old man and the shimmering toys he made himself. And this place. Made of bones and things that thought and thought and thought and didn't feel.

She remembered the Coliseum in Kadessa. It had made her skin crawl, and her ears feel like a thousand people were plucking at them, pleading, begging, shouting. _Let us tell you how we died._

Her people were tyrants, liars and murderers. That's all there was to it.

Her eyes adjusted to the contrast between black sky and grey stone, and she picked out the figure nearby. He looked like a stone himself, but the ruff of the pelt he wore around his waist fluttered in the wind, and she saw him by that.

The Giganto, oddly enough, didn't make her nervous. Albert wasn't entirely comfortable around him. His grandfather had led the expedition into Kongol's city all those years ago, and put every inhabitant to the sword. Kongol never brought it up, but Albert remembered. Everyone else just saw his enormous size and thundering voice, remembered how hard it had been to fight him, and kept on guard, as if he were an avalanche just waiting to rip the mountainside apart.

Meru liked him because he was tall and if she bugged him enough (_really_ bugged him, like jumped up and down and wouldn't let him sit down anywhere and kept screeching and crying until he gave in) he'd let her ride on his shoulder until they next rested. And because, like her, he also didn't have pants.

And Kongol knew.

His city was bones as well.

Meru unfolded her legs and rose to her feet, one birdbone hand wrapped carelessly around the haft of her hammer. She danced her way down the rocks to where Kongol was sitting.

He didn't turn his head, but his eyes glittered down at her. Even when seated, he was taller than she was.

"Hey," she said, and pushed her toe forwards without actually nudging him. Her voice was cracked from the long day of sun and little water. "Come on. I'll steal some of Miranda's hair stuff and we can do up your Mohawk again."

She was a little shocked when his lip curled upward in a grin, revealing the largest, flattest and most white teeth she had ever seen. It was a little terrifying, until she remembered that his favorite food was a certain spicy pepper that would burn the roof of your mouth off before you finished chewing. "Kongol like that," he rumbled.

She flashed her own grin in return. "Good," she said.

And that's all there was to it.

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	4. Rose

**Elements and Memory**

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They weren't angels.

She realized this now, curled as she was as far as possible away from the rest of them, away from the brunt of the terrible light. The other children whimpered and babbled to themselves mindlessly as they awaited their fate, most of them sick and skinny, coughing weakly and letting their snot drip down their faces.

Her face smarted and throbbed dully, the whole side of her face swollen red, ugly, and puffed. Her nose had a tight wrongness to it, and by the crunching sound that it had made when it broke, she supposed she oughtn't to mess with it.

She had bitten the guard's hand when he snatched her out of her nest, bitten with needle-sharp teeth and her inborn ferocity, punching through the skin as neatly as any wolf dog. He had sworn a violent oath, and had cracked her across the face with his closed fist, and she had let go, and had not caused any problems after that.

Her mother had called them angels, as had her whole settlement. They spoke of them with awe, with hushed, fearful voices, saying that they were the messengers of Soa, and that their powers were infinite. Some had surrendered docilely to the work camps, and later to the cullings of the weak and the sick, saying that it was Soa's will. Still others had resisted, and the Winglies had responded viciously and swiftly, slaughtering entire communities in retribution, sometimes because of a single Wingly death.

Rose's mother's community had spoken angrily and bitterly about the actions of the Resistance, and had done nothing to encourage them. However, even they had struggled when the roundups for the Magical City Aglis had begun, but it had been to no use; they had been quiescent for too long. Rose's grandfather and uncles had had their heads beaten in for daring to protest the act.

Rose snapped out of her silent appraisal of her injuries, as the portal slid open, and three hard-mouthed guards and a delicate looking Wingly in aqua colored robes stepped in. The guards began hauling the other children by their hair into a small pile, as the studious Wingly came to her side.

He looked perturbed by the screaming children around him, but looked at her, and his face relaxed into a gentle smile. He was young, and soft looking, his eyes crinkling becomingly at the edges. "Hello, " he said, "Do you think you could come with me?"

Rose stared at him distrustfully, her black eyes cold and reproachful above her swollen nose. He tsked at that, and remarked, "We could get some ice on that nose, you know, and heal it up some." He stretched out a thin, delicate hand to her, and rose to his feet, "Come on, let's go."

She took his hand slowly, and he pulled her to her feet easily, and they began to walk out. "I'm Savan. Who are you?"

"Rose…" she said, and the door shut behind them, just as the guard brought his club brutally down on the first child, snuffing out his imperfect life as easily as a candle.

* * *

Rose found herself getting the first hot wash of her life, in a small tin tub before the crackling fireplace of her new quarters. Savan had fussed over her nose a bit, setting it with a shock of pain that had made her jolt back and stare murderously at him. He had discounted that, and then had made her drink the icy cold contents of a blue glass bottle, which had slid down her throat with the crackle of white magic. It made her cringe, but her nose had made a slight squeaking of cartiledge, and the pain vanished, and the swelling abated.

Now he crouched beside her on the luxurious carpet, teasing the knots out of her short, wild hair, and massaging in stringent oil that made her eyes smart.

She splashed experimentally, sending a scattering of droplets over the carpet and hearth, which sizzled, and evaporated quickly. Savan chided her gently, and ran the cloth over her skinny ribs.

It was a small room, but it had windows and a fireplace, and a small, low bed with a delicious looking down comforter, and a fat pillow.

Savan had been instructed by Feralt to care for the child until it was able to sustain the heavy physical trauma needed for the procedure. So, he was to take it away for a few weeks, feed it proper, fix any health issues, and make it hardy enough for it.

He smiled. It was kind of cute really, like one of his own little nieces, when it wasn't glaring at him, and sitting like a doughy lump in the graying bathwater. Rose, he mused, what a pretty name for an animal. It would be a nice distraction to teach it a few tricks, to speak properly for one. All he had gotten it to say was its name, and now really, he thought to himself, how was he to know it wasn't just mimicking someone else's conversation.

But Savan could not fool himself completely. There was grave consideration in every glance of her cool dark eyes that looked at him scornfully when he suggested amusing herself with a small, carved wooden sea-dragon. (Although it did look more like a fat, grinning snake.)

"I've a nice supper waiting for you, if you'd like. I'll go get it, you just dry yourself off before the fire, there?" He helped her step out, and draped a large, fragrant bathtowl around her shoulders. She looked up at him, water beading down her face from her wet, sable hair, and said nothing.

Sad, he thought, as he took the covered tray from outside the heavily barred door. She looks so very sad. My grandmother doesn't look that tired, and she's going onto her sixth century.

Gently, he helped her eat her rich supper, and tucked her into bed shortly, thinking all kinds of amiable, humored thoughts about the quaintness of it all, and left.

Rose spent that night huddled under the huge comforter, alone and quiet, well fed and clean for perhaps the first time in her life, but still feeling utterly nothing.

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	5. Zieg

**Elements and Memory**

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There was no cheering to be heard as he entered the ring, no upswelling roar of a thousand voices clamoring for a damned good fight. There never was. Winglies may enjoy the ring as a national pasttime, but there was no need to be so _barbaric_ about it.

Instead, all that greeted him was a rising murmur of voices from the thousands of Winglies in the stands, thousands of whispers and appraisals all delivered in perfect monotone. Elegant, refined, and courteous. Thus did the Wingly race greet the last ring fight of the seventh son of the seventh son of the House of Fire.

Zieg hocked and spat on the sand. He ducked a cuff from his handler, and then began rolling his neck around, loosening up for the match. He didn't know what he was fighting. He never did. He just knew that he had failed to die in any of the numerous previous fights, and Soa willing, he'd scrape by again today and get a double ration and a girl if he was lucky.

His hands were chained, and they knocked against the pommel of his short sword as he shuffled forward into the full light of the Coliseum. His handler unlocked his chains and pushed him forward before he retreated into the dark and coolness of the entranceway. Zieg stretched his arms out and massaged his wrists, scanning the crowd.

His thoughts were cool. Calm. Empty. He'd learned to reach that state before every fight.

A glitter in the stands. A nobleman. A general, maybe. He had his own box, shaded with blue and white curtains and fanned by copper-skinned humans with long plumes in their hands and golden chains around their ankles. Their faces were pleasant and beautiful and blank, in stark contrast with their master, who apparently didn't care about the Wingly manifesto, and was eagerly perched on the edge of his seat, hands clenched on the arms of his chair.

_He wants a show, _thought Zieg with a detached sort of scorn. _I'll give him a show._

He'd been fighting his way to the Royal Coliseum for four years. He'd never lost a match. He also hadn't had his guts punctured by a foreign piece of metal yet, which coincided nicely with having never lost a match.

He was the seventh son of the seventh son of the House of Fire. He would not be defeated. He would not die. It was simple, really.

Zieg didn't stalk the edges of the ring like a caged bear. He didn't smirk and slouch and pick his teeth. The wind ruffled his hair and plucked at his clothing, but he didn't move. He stood, and he waited, and prepared himself.

_What will it be today? _He wondered. _A man. Two men. Two men and a rabid bear. Two men, a rabid bear, and a flock of hissing Moss Dressers. _

He didn't bother thinking about his chances for survival. He didn't really have hope anymore, but if he did and he was feeling strange he might say that he hoped that he would win.

The sun burned hot on his brow, and he inhaled as its golden light bathed him in warmth. His dusty hair fluttered in the rising wind that made the dust whirl and spin a dervish.

Flickering barriers of energy rose up to cover the stands and protect the inhabitants. He blinked in surprise, but had no time to register any other emotion before the sand shuddered in the center of the gigantic ring and began to sink as an enormous platform rose.

Something the color of old blood and fire, something _enormous_, writhed and jerked its restraints, and its trapped and tortured howl made Zieg feel like his bones were melting.

Its wings were nothing but shiny scar stumps where huge expanses of skin and bone ought to be.

Its eyes were many, and they were furious.

He was the seventh son of the seventh son of the House of Fire.

He would not be defeated.

He would not fail.

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	6. Albert

**Elements and Memory**

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The one perk of being the only king in the group was that you almost always got your own room.

Sure, he always said that he just wanted to be a member of the gang, a dirty peasant like the rest of them- but now, in a warm clean bed all by himself, he was glad it had worked out this way. Haschel snored like a log being sawn in half- Dart tended to talk in his sleep about Shana, and Kongol had the unerring ability to make any hotel room seem infinitely smaller.

And of course there was no question of sleeping with the ladies.

Albert stretched out like a cat on the sheets, his hair unbound and frizzing out in an attractive sort of way over his shirtless back. He drowsed on his stomach, arms around his pillow and his head buried in it, the very picture of unkempt lethargy. The sun was only just washing over the horizon and was bathing his room in the colors of the morning.

His eyebrow twitched.

That was a good line.

He ought to remember that. Write it down or something.

... Too comfortable.

Albert was just comfortable enough to drift from his fuzzy stage of half-sleep into a full out snooze when his door rattled furiously, and then exploded inward as someone short, blue, and horrifically underdressed invaded his quarters with the utmost of enthusiasm.

He only just barely managed to yank the sheet up higher before she was on his bed with a bounce and yelling, "Good MORNING Al! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and oh by the way Dart totally wants to talk to everybody downstairs so you should put a shirt on or something and skip to it, oh, and they have a fruit plate that is to DIE for so meetcha there!"

And she was gone.

Albert sighed, and tried to snuggle into his pillow again, but it didn't work.

The moment had been crushed under the unmerciful heel of someone whose sense of fashion included as many big fluffy blue and yellow bows as possible.

And no pants.

With another sigh that was more than a little bit wistful, he sat up and began to pull his clothes on.

* * *

Downstairs, the only member of the party who looked remotely awake was Dart, and he seemed rather embarrassed about it.

"I just told her that we should have a meeting when everyone got up," he admitted to Albert. "I didn't think she'd, well, _get_ you all up."

"I'm going to kill her," remarked Miranda calmly with her chin resting on the table. "Six hours of sleep. I am going to kill her."

Haschel eyed her nervously, "You seem so... serene about it."

Miranda blinked. Her eyes narrowed. "I am going to _kill_ her."

"Kongol need REM cycle to function. Without, sad." rumbled the Giganto from his corner of the room. "Now will get wrinkles."

Albert looked around the common room some more, "Where is Rose? And Meru herself?"

"Here I am!"

Meru bounded into the room with a tray of fruit on one arm. "Kumquat?" she asked innocently, proffering it to him.

"...No thank you," said Albert. He wasn't entirely sure what they were.

"Rose," said Meru, popping one in her mouth, "Is being a big MEANIE and refused to listen, I swear she was hanging from the ceiling like a _bat_ when I came in, she's so friggin' scary."

"Meru, you should have left her alone," said Dart disapprovingly.

'Yeah, but you said yourself you wanted _everybody!_" said Meru sweetly. She dropped into a chair and sat sideways, her long skinny legs draped over the arms while her crimson eyes blinked innocently.

"No more talking! Somebody order breakfast!" snapped Miranda. "NOW."

Everyone went very quiet. Kongol coughed awkwardly into his hand.

Dart shifted uncomfortably, "Yes, that's what I wanted to talk to you all about. Hopefully when you were all fully rested." Here he shot a glance at Meru, who pretended to be too busy examining her toes. He sighed, and dragged a hand through his frondy hair. "We're out of money."

Albert had seated himself at the table next to Haschel and Miranda. He blinked. "What about that money we got for ridding Furni of that wolf?"

"Gone."

"All of it?" Albert asked.

Dart shrugged, "Well, we had five gold left as of this morning. Then Meru wanted a fruit plate."

Heads turned.

Meru looked annoyed from her perch in her chair. By now she was upside down, with her hair sweeping the floor. "Dudes, I offered you all some. Don't get mad at me."

The silence that followed was only broken by Miranda gritting out, "I am going to **_kill_** her."

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	7. Coolon

**Elements and Memory**

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**Author's Note: **Is this where I put the obligatory "I don't own insert-fandom-here, don't sue me"? Jeebus, maybe I should have a few chapters back. Eh, too late now. Just assume that I do.

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A whisper through the trees woke the creature lying in the grass. He stretched, and hummed low to himself, a ripple of light traveling from the crest of his head to the long sweep of his tail. The moon was high.

It reflected off of her hair.

"Rose?"

She was leaning against a tree, every long line of her hiding her thoughts and wrapping her in enigma. It was the way she wanted it, he remembered with another's memories. How she'd always wanted it.

Coolon's eyes whirled in their sockets, a glow of color winking in their depths. A susurrus of air flowed over and under him, and he floated a little on the grass. "What is it?"

She was silent for a moment more. Her armor was chipped, and dented in places, and the sleek black leather of her leggings, usually as immaculate and oiled as the glow of her hair, was dusty and faded.

Her voice was short, to the point. "Might I speak with Savan?"

The light in Coolon's whirling eyes faded. "I am... not him." he said sadly. He wanted to help her, truly he did. Above all the others, he wanted to help her.

"You said that he was reborn in you."

"Yes... but I am me."

Silence again. Rose shook her long heavy hair out, and turned to go back to the camp.

Coolon's heart raced, and his tail lashed, "Wait!"

She paused, and regarded him carefully with one glittering black eye.

"I... I have his memories." Coolon said, groping randomly for some answer to make her stay. She had to stay. "I can tell you what he remembered."

Rose turned once more to face him, her hand on her sword hilt. She probably didn't even realize she was doing it. When she spoke, her voice was soft.

"What did he mean when he said he remembered me?"

A flash of light erupted in his spinning eyes, and the bright colors in his wings flared into life. This he could answer, and he did so readily, "He was part of the team in Aglis that selected you when you were young, he gave you a bath and clothes and food while they were preparing, he held you while they-"

"Stop." Her voice was a knife, and it cut him loose from his long chain of memory. Her chin was suddenly lifted high, and her back was ramrod straight. The colors on his wings and back faded, and he sank to the grass again.

All was silent once more. A pop from the dying fire behind them signaled that the logs were at last giving out, and no one replaced them.

"So he was merely a member of the research team." she said finally. Her breathing had slowed, and she'd lost the dangerous hard look in her eyes.

"...Yes." said Coolon. He knew he had made her angry with him, but he didn't know how. He grasped for the only other way he knew to make things right. "Do you... need my wings?"

She relaxed then, and the smallest of small smiles crossed her face, vanishing so quickly that his heart could only give a small leap of wonder at having seen it. "No." she said, and turned to go once more. "Sleep."

"Yes Rose." he said, and settled down on the grass once more to watch the moon.

"And Coolon?"

"Yes Rose?"

"Just be Coolon. Don't be anyone else."

"Yes Rose."

She vanished into the trees once more, and Coolon's eyes went dark. He spent the night humming to the sky

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Next! Rose/Zior! Because the people demand it! And I always listen to the people.

People, of course being me.


	8. Heat Blade

**Elements and Memory**

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Dart gave it an experimental wave. "What is it?"

Albert helpfully picked up the dropped label from inside the box, and scrutinized it carefully. "A 'genuine Tiberoan Heat Blade'," he read slowly. "'Free sample. Please see attached response form and fill it out carefully, then mail to P.O. Box 3943, Donau before July tenth-" the King looked up bemusedly. "It seems that they want you to try it out, then tell them what you think."

They stood in puzzlement on the glacial ledge, shivering slightly in the cold air.

Dart poked the icy wall with the sword. The wall sizzled, then slowly melted around the blade. His eyes widened. "Wah-hey!" he said happily. "Look at that!"

"It seems quite useful, then," said Rose coolly, her arms crossed in front of her. "May we move on?"

"Dart, I'm _freezing_," said Meru loudly. "Can I stick that thing down my shirt for a while?"

Albert patted down his pockets absently, "Anyone have a pencil?"

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( XD )


	9. Miranda

**Elements and Memory**

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Miranda loves her father.

Her mother doesn't.

He's short and he's funny and bald and has eyes as blue as the patterns on the dusty china that lived perpetually in the back of the cupboard. He's a wheelwright, a woodworker, and he smells of sawdust and wood polish. She loves that smell so much.

He has a still in the woods behind the house, and when he returns from it every so often with bottles under his arms, he doesn't smell like sawdust anymore. Instead, he smells like something sweet and strange and swimmingly toxic, and her mother's lips go thin. Her father gets quite jolly on those nights, and Miranda, confused, but happy, plays along as he dances with her in the kitchen. But on those nights, her mother goes frigid-brittle and sits by the fire, shoulders clenched, and doesn't speak to either of them. Because when Miranda's father opens the still, it means that Miranda's mother must put a kerchief over her long bright hair and go to work with the washerwomen in town. Every time she comes back smelling of sweat and lye and smoke, her eyes red from the washing room and her muscles sore from stirring boiling clothes all day.

She speaks to Miranda's father in a tight, hurt voice then, and throws whatever she's earned that day down on the table, and the coins look so small. But her chin's lifted, and her lip's curled, and there's a bulldog glint to her eye.

Miranda's father looks grave when this happens, and he scrapes the coins off of the table and holds them carefully, solemnly in his hand. He says, "I will take these, and I will buy a bushel of Sedge's seed potatoes, and then we can sell them next year_."_ And then he walks out the door. Miranda's mother sags into a chair and her face is like a gray mask made of candlewax.

_Miranda has a doll made of pretty red fabric and a painted wooden head with pale, perfect pink smiling lips. Her father carved the wood with his big rough hands, and her mother painted the face with her long bony ones, and she can't recall the last time that they had collaborated with each other on something so well._


	10. Duality

**Elements and Memory**

**0.-0.-0.**

_Author's Note: Yeah, this was kinda sorta supposed to be a chapter of Bones, back before I decided to go the other direction. Same theme, different way it could have ended up._

**0.-0.-0**

Meru knows her hammer through and through, and she knows you need to get right up close to do the most damage.

Never has she been surer of the damage being done when she's been this close.

_The skin at his waist is as soft as a horse's muzzle, and Dart's breath hitches when her hands brush against it, but he's crushing her to him like he's the neediest man in the world, and maybe he is, because Shana's gone now and she left him all alone. _

She'd come back to Seles to find Dart sitting alone at his kitchen table, staring into nothing. She's dead, he said to her with eyes that were so blue and empty that it seemed like they went straight on through to the back of his skull. She died.

An illness that swept through her like she was _nothing_, and there had been no medicine and no amount of time that could have saved her.

_His skin is dark but for the lightness of old scars, and his hair is messy, and he _smells_ like he hasn't washed for days, and she knows he hasn't; the grief ate him up until it only left this small desperate shell in his place. Why is she doing this._

She stayed to take care of him. He couldn't be left alone, she was sure of that. And she made him meals and tidied the house and slept in the spare bedroom until one night she'd heard him breaking down in the room over (terrible and _weak_, like he'd never been) and had gone in to check and now-

_And Meru remembers all the women that have left him in his life; his mother, Rose, and now Shana, and she knows that what he wants is some reassurance that there is someone that will not leave him, and she knows that doing this is what neither of them needs and that this will rip both of them apart in the end but-_

"Dart, just... please..." she gasps into his ear, his belly sliding against hers, as if saying his name will unmake all of this. Her arms wrapped so tight around him that little lightning streaks of pain ripple down and make her bones throb.

He breathes and rasps and grinds the air out of his lungs, and he's shaking like somebody dying, and she knows he is; he's been dying ever since his little whitegold moonwife left and soon there will be nothing left of him.

_I am sorry for what you have become and for who you used to be._

The thoughts are drops of blood in a still pool, and they spread like clouds and color her entire mind.

_What was the point of saving the world if it's only going to end now?_

0.-0.-0


	11. Gehrich

**Elements and Memory**

_I want to throw you.  
I want you to know I know.  
I want to know if you read me.  
I want to swing with my eyes shut and see what I hit.  
I want to know just how much you hate me so I can predict what you'll do.  
I want you to know the wounds are self-inflicted.  
I want a controlling interest.  
I want to be somewhere beautiful when I die._

_-Recoil, "Want"_

**0.-0.-0**

Gehrich had always thought that he liked them confident.

He could handle a smart mouth, years of tuning-out henchmen when he needed to had trained him for that, but Lenus's mouth was more like an open sewer, and she wasn't so much confident as the fact that _she_ knew that _they _knew that they couldn't take her if their collective asses were on fire. She had a gap-toothed leer that made every man-jack of them fidget uncomfortably like his shirt was too tight and his crotch was in a vise, and that tickled her pink.

Later on, he figured that it all started to go to hell when that she came waltzing into the throne room, kicking Mappi in front of her like he was a hunchbacked welcome mat.

"Hey," she called out when she made her way up to the dais where Gehrich was struggling to haul himself into a more upright sitting position. "_Old guy_. You wanna make some money?"

And that was Lenus.

**0.-0.-0**

He'd always figured that he'd like a girl that knew where she was going.

"You want to _what?" _he said, and tried not to feel like he was struggling to catch up.

She blew air out of her lips in an annoyed hiss, then gave him a bored look from where she was lounging on one of the spare Giganto chairs. The seat was wide enough for her to properly lounge on it, with her legs hooked over one of the arms while she sprawled with her arms behind her head on the seat proper. She looked perfectly comfortable, but there was no way that someone in armor like _that_ could sit comfortably for long, he thought darkly. What wasn't thin leather was blue steel, and the metal plates on her chest were barely flexible enough to keep her breasts from spilling out.

He found himself becoming slightly dazed. _Jeez, _he thought fuzzily. _Think those are padded? They've got to be. _

When he snapped his eyes up to hers once again, he saw that she was baring her teeth at him in a leering grin, her hair falling in her eyes like razorblades. She stretched.

Once he'd gotten over her awful peal of laughter as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, she sat up properly folded her arms and tucked her chin in like a boxer. "We kidnap the princess, put her in a magical coma, lock her in a hidden, magic, sparklypoo labyrinth while I infiltrate the castle and make your group the richest sons of bitches on the continent."

He grunted.

They were in the treasure room, the only place that Gehrich could think of with both adequate security, and enough chairs. Sure, they were mostly dusty, Giganto-sized thrones made of the skulls of long-dead enemies, but it was the thought that counted.

Gehrich palmed his face with one hand, and looked up at her tiredly. _I'm getting too old for this. _"And you're somehow going to pass for a princess until the coronation."

She shrugged, and Gehrich tried to ignore what that did to her chest, "What can I say?" she said, smiling beautifully. "I've got class."

"At which point, the whole thing's going to fall apart," he finished flatly.

Lenus made a _poof_ gesture with her narrow hands, and smiled beatifically. "Like a house of cards," she drawled.

Gehrich scratched his mustache, and looked up at her from under his brows. "At which point, what will you be doing?"

White teeth gleaming in a shark's smile as she purred, "I make off with the tasty bits of the royal treasury, and you guys can do whatever you want with the rest of Tiberoa." Her white eyebrows lanced down suddenly, "I heard you were some kind of ball-punching wizard. Why d'you carry a knife?"

"I like knives," he rumbled defensively.

"Really?" she said, rolling to a sitting position like her spine was made of melted butter. "Me too."

He noticed that she may have had a jaw like a horse, but her eyes were long-lashed and dusky, and her lips were pretty enough if you ignored the way her smile felt like a steel-toed kick in the junk. There was a glint there, and he didn't identify it at first until he realized that it was the shine of someone who was crazy in a way that mad dogs in the noonday sun only dream about.

**0.-0.-0**

If you'd asked him about it before, Gehrich would have told you that he'd always fancied himself with a girl who could get things done.

They were waiting in the jumble of rocks on the cliff's edge, well above the royal hunting party as it meandered through the ancient river bed on the way to the grasslands.

"Look at her," growled Lenus, sweat staining her bandana a darker red, her eyes fixed on the target. "Riding ahead like she's the Queen of fuckin' Sheba."

"Makes it easier, don't it?" said Gehrich, sitting with his hands on his kneecaps in the shadow of a boulder.

Mappi was one shadow over, squinting flinchingly at Lenus every once in a while. She had him cowed. It hadn't taken much. Gehrich swore that he was going to invest in better henchmen the next time around. He yawned, "You gonna make it bolt, or are you just gonna stare at it 'till it bursts into flames?"

She shot him a withering glance, then strung the short bow she'd kept at her feet by propping it against a rock until she could loop it. "The thing about Runners," she grunted, "Is that they're awfully good at what they do, given the right provocation." She nocked an arrow, and narrowed her eyes down the shaft. "Heads or tails?"

Gehrich grumbled, then dug a coin out of his belt and flipped it. "Tails," he said, looking down at the back of his wrist.

She grinned, and the string buzzed as an arrow planted itself high in the hindquarters of the dun Runner that was carrying the Princess Emile. It squealed, deep-throated and terrible, and burst into a dead gallop that sent it hurtling through one of the side canyons. The Princess bent down over its neck, her mouth in one white, terrified line, and hauled on the reins with all her might, but the bit was evidently in its teeth, for it paid no attention.

"Cut the line," said Lenus between gritted teeth as her eyes followed the path of the Runner. "_Cut the fucking line."_

Gehrich sighed, pulled the knife out of its sheath and sawed through the rope running by his ankles in one slice. That set loose the trap, which sent about six thousand pounds of boulders crashing down behind the Princess, blocking the canyon and separating her from the rest of the party.

"_Yes!_" muttered Lenus, pumping her fist viciously. "Fuckin' pink, fluffy cunt, I bet her Daddy shits his pants over this, the fat pompous fuck."

Gehrich watched the Princess's progress down the canyon. The Runner's stride wasn't affected by the arrow much, it ran fast and clean over the uneven terrain, but it was still to the Princess's credit as a rider that she didn't fall off.

"She won't get far, boss," said one of his men by his elbow. "The canyon runs out a quarter of a mile down, and we've got a couple of guys waiting down there. We'll nab her."

"Good," grunted Gehrich. "Get on it." His men melted down from the cliff wall hurriedly, and he called after them, "_And heal up the arrow wound_, we don't want to give them any reason to suspect something when they finally catch up."

Lenus dropped her bow carelessly, and wormed out of her hiding spot until she was inches away from Gehrich's hip, her belly in the dust. She smiled sweetly up at him, her outburst forgotten. "Think she'll fall? Split her head open on a rock like watermelon?" Her voice lowered, "I used to_ love_ sucking on those seeds. I can spit 'em six feet, you know."

"Don't even think about it," he growled at her, his eyes narrowed. "She dies, and our little business venture falls apart at the seams."

She pouted. One of her milky-white hands snaked up and curled around his calf. Squeezed. "You don't want to get rid of little old me, do you?" she asked, her voice going syrupy. Her breasts bulged up out of her ridiculous armor, and he felt like hitting her.

"Let go of me," he said, jerking his leg out of her grasp. She smirked, and let go slowly, then propped her elbow on the ground with her chin in her hand.

"We've got plenty of time, you know, until they need to switch me in," she said, batting her eyes. "And you're so... _muscley."_

He looked down at her in disbelief, no small amount of disgust on his face. _Does she realize what she even sounds like? _"Is that how it works?" he said carefully. "When you aren't trying to kill something, you're off to fuck it?"

Her eyes narrowed, and her fingers tightened on her chin. Her upper lip drew up a little as she turned her head to the side a little and looked at him, long and hard. But then she smiled, sharp and nasty, and mouthed a kiss at him as she drew herself up into a crouch behind the rock.

"I never asked," he said, lounging back against the boulder. "The money, I get. The power, the influence, and that treasure you're gunning for, I understand that. What's the real reason you're doing this?"

He watched her, her white hair curling in the heat where she lay below him. Impossibly, the act drained out of her features, and it left her grey eyes hard as flint.

"True love," she said bluntly, her chin jutted out. "The likes of which you're never going to know about, you _fucking asshole_."

Suddenly, she was scrabbling up out of the dust and kicking sand in his face, ignoring her silhouette against the sky that could give them away to the royal hunting party. He swore, and brought an arm up to protect his eyes while he rolled out of the way and into a crouch behind a different boulder. His hand snaked towards his belt for his knife, but not before she had one of her needle-thin knives out and was on him, every long skinny inch of her pressed up against him as she shoved it up against his throat. Gehrich cursed himself for going for his knife when he'd been trained exclusively to go without one, but it was too late.

Her face was inches from his, and he was shockingly aware of every scrap of her skin that her armor didn't cover. He knew that she'd designed it that way, and it was all that he could do to keep his head clear.

"Which is something you're never going to understand about me," she breathed, her eyes fluttering down with mocking preciseness as she slivered the blade around his neck in a thin line of fire. "I'm bone-deep, head over heels in love, and that makes me the most dangerous woman in the world."

Gehrich coughed, stilled his hands at his sides, and ignored the rocks digging into his kidneys. "He somebody special, your man?" he said.

The smile dropped from her lips, and she snapped her teeth in his face, "He's my fucking _world_. But I will cut your fucking balls off _right here_ and pull this whole circus off by my lonesome if I have to. So shut up and do your part, you cuntsucking, bottomfeeding _fuck_."

_This woman is insane_, he thought, quite clearly.

She smiled again, all razor sweetness, and slid up off of him and to her feet. "You're just lucky my man wants an army on my side when the time comes," she spat down at him. "Like I'll need it."

He could back out now, he knew. He could call the whole thing off, and keep her from killing him long enough to get away. She was crazy. Not crazy in a way that meant that they might actually pull this off, a shining crazy that could fool the whole world into going along for the ride. She was the kind of madness you'd find in bull-baiting dogs, who'd let themselves be pounded to death under the hooves of a huge creature just so long as they had a good hold on its nostrils first.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked suspiciously, her eyes mere slits. "You wanna go pick up the Princess and get your share of the profits, or should we just sit here and jack off some more?"

She swore like it was some kind of contest, and she was afraid of losing.

He felt his throat, and looked at the small smears of blood that came off on his fingertips. _Fuck it_, he thought. _At least there's always the money_.

Gehrich had always told himself that he'd go for a girl who spoke her mind.

**0.-0.-0**


	12. Drake

**Elements and Memory**

**0.-0.-0**

He is a man who has become an expert in the unnecessary gesture.

He winds tripwires like runner beans across stairwells. He sows caltrops like barley across the flagstones. He has greased every hinge and readied the equipment for a harvest that will most likely not come for as long as he lives.

Four years ago he stumbled out of the woods with an arrow in his gut. He fell out of the woods, dying quite rapidly, and landed in a pool surrounded by ruined towers the color of cold milk and mother of pearl. He fell into a pool, mad with pain, certain that he was about to go out like a match in the rain. When he woke, he found himself in a place full of ghosts and cool water that the world had forgotten centuries ago.

He loves a woman in the walls. He loves a woman with red hair and a _softsweettragic _smile, who has all the solidity of campfire smoke. He loves a woman who was dead before these towers had time to crumble, or so she tells it.

(_She has a curiously indistinct voice, like bird calls floating over a lake. She speaks and she tells stories, and sometimes she cries. She tells good stories for a dead woman, stories about long-dead emperors and dragon knights with gallant hearts, about dying with blood in your eyes and a bowstring scraping your arm raw and victory in sight.)_

He has nothing left for him outside of this temple. He has nothing aside from a badly healed arrow wound in his stomach, a battered old hat, and an arsenal of deathtraps. He lives for nothing more than the well regard of a ghost.

He isn't the champion she deserves. He isn't a priest of this temple (he doesn't even know what gods were involved when it was dedicated.) But he loves the sad ghost woman with all the love of a crooked old man who could never touch anything without breaking it, whose fingers were never suitable for anything other than razorwire and gunpowder, and now he is in love with someone he cannot touch and cannot corrupt. His love for her is perfect and terrible, and he is well aware that it the only thing in his life that he cannot ruin, no matter how hard he tries.

He cannot do much, but he will protect a dead woman. He will remind her of what she was and what she also strives to protect. He will be there in the dark watches in the spaces between white stones and green water. He can do that much.

(_It isn't hard to do, but she thanks him for it, and that warms him.)_

When the time comes, and his refuge is finally discovered, and all the catches are pulled, all the wires tripped, and every trap is sprung, then he will leave. He will barricade himself inside the deepest treasure chamber, surrounded by all the wealth of a thousand dead kings, and he will place a crossbow bolt in his mouth and pull the trigger. He will die alone, and in the dark, with one last failure knocking at his door.

He doesn't delude himself into thinking that he shall haunt this ruin like his woman in the walls.

(_He doesn't delude himself into thinking that she would be his woman if she were still alive.) _

He knows that people like him don't rest in places like this. He knows what awaits him after he crosses over- the priests had made that clear enough when he was a kid.

But he will keep the temple hers and holy for as long as he is able, and when he isn't, he won't make a fuss about it. Nothing dramatic, no famous shootouts for the bards to sing about. Just a barred door, and log trap set to go off when that too is eventually breached, and a crossbow bolt in the dark. Just one more spawned-out bandit getting his just desserts.

He hopes that she will be there, in the dark, before the bolt.

He hopes that she will sit beside him, giving off her guttering candle-flame-angel-light, and he hopes that she will have something to say to him, just to him. He hopes that the sight of her red hair and the delicate bruised surface of her eyelids is the last thing he sees. He hopes that the bolt comes as a flash of light and the scent of her hair.

(_She has told him that she will leave someday, and see her comrades at peace.)_

(_He hopes that he leaves before she does.)_

**0.-0.-0**


	13. 11,000 years

**Elements and Memory**

**0.-0.-0**

They fuck best after the battles are over, when the blood's still caked onto their skin and the adrenaline's still pumping through their veins. It's all in an effort to reassure each other that yeah, they're both alive, and it feels good to be.

When they first latch onto each other with greedy fingers and cruel lips, he's eighteen and she can't be more than fifteen. Neither of them are virgins.

She isn't kind, and he isn't noble, and neither of them have any control over their fate, or what they're doing, or how fast they breathe. They're two puppets, ruthlessly plumbing the depths of each other in an effort to stave off the inevitable.

When it's over, they sleep on opposite ends of the bed, more her choice than his, the sheets barely pulled over them. But her hand still reaches out and just barely brushes the ravaged and striped skin of his back, a feather-like touch, just to remind herself that he's still there.

The nerves there are long numb and dead, but he shivers sometimes when she does it.

_Damia is dead and Syuveil is dead and Zieg fucks a black-hearted woman._

**0.-0.-0**


End file.
